John Sharp is an IT Manager for a major medical center in Northeast Ohio. Areas of expertise include: ehealth, personal health records, Web 2.0 technologies, social media and project management. He is active in the Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society and the American Medical Informatics Association. The opinions expressed on this blog are those of the author.
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Posts Tagged ‘Disruptive Technology’
Declining Marginal Returns of Complexity
June 21, 2010
Just completed the book The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter, an archeologist. The focus of the book is on civilizations like the Roman Empire and the Mayas but it made me wonder about the complexity of health care and whether we are at the point of declining marginal returns. It is apparent from the health care reform experience that competing stakeholders make any attempt at reform a complex and nearly impossible process. Clay Shirky wrote a blog post in April on The Collapse of Complex Business Models. Just like societies which become too complex to respond to major stressors. While I am not predicting the collapse of health care in the US but one must wonder whether some of the complexity could be simplified by the experience of other countries, such as, single payer systems and an emphasis on primary care (medical home). Would be interested in other opinions, especially from those who have read the book.
Technology and the Future of Chronic Care
May 24, 2010
Accenture has published a report on “Connected How Technology Will Transform the Future of Chronic Care.” From the Accenture Innovation Center for Health, a good source for research white papers. The paper reports that “a broad range of consumer health electronics at home, a two-way, direct-to-consumer infrastructure” and smart devices which set the stage for health care connectivity. Analytics and predictive modeling provide a second layer and visualization, decision support and collaboration provide the third. Connect health examples include the HealthVault and Cleveland Clinic home monitoring pilot and a remote monitoring trial by the VA system.
There is no doubt that the convergence of technologies have the potential for revolutionizing chronic care, however, we must go past the pilot stage and initial startups to broader change. Partnerships between consumer electronics, startups, providers and insurers need to come together with government support. Perhaps after the first wave of meaningful use EHRs, this new level of innovation can flourish.
Hospital as Software Service Providers
April 3, 2010
In an article on HealthLeaders, how health systems can provide an EMR via Software as a Service (SaaS) is presented. Five requirements are noted:
Cleveland Clinic is noted as an example. Dr. C. Martin Harris says, “”Success to me is that we are not just installing technology in an office to replace paper, but we are putting in technology that enables interoperability,”
Of course, Cleveland Clinic provides other software to help hospitals and providers:
- explorys to utilize EMRs for research and discovery
- Intellis - business intelligence
- A PHR which connects to Google Health
- Home Monitoring which utilizes Microsoft HealthVault to connect with the PHR and EMR
- Risk calculators for Prostate Cancer and heart surgery
What are other hospitals doing? How about an award program for the hospital or health system which produces the most useful software?
Remote Health TelePresence Demo
March 30, 2010
At the Gigabit Breakfast Club at Case Western Reserve University, there was a demo by a professor of medicine. How does Telepresence differ from traditional telehealth? Watch and see.
Other presentations included:
- The Transformation Potential of Fiber for Smart and Connected Communities
- Remote Demonstration STEM class and Lab on campus
- video of endoscopic hydrocephalus surgery
Disruptive Technology in Healthcare IT – Major Vendors Back Off?
March 28, 2007
In a response to a letter regarding the lack of major vendors at the HIMSS Venture Capital fair, Christensen and Raynor’s in The Innovator’s Solution is cited regarding how established companies often view disruptive technology as a threat. They suggest, “The proven solution is to have senior managers make a solid commitment to address and allocate resources to the disruption and then place the responsibility to
commercialize it in an independent organizational unit.”
Is Web 2.0 one of those disruptive technologies being ignored or seen as a threat? For instance, why purchase an extensive knowledge management system if an open source Wiki can catalog your business knowledge across the enterprise.
Perhaps companies like PracticeFusion free EHR will challenge some major players to rethink strategy.
Disruptive Technologies 2007
January 3, 2007
In an article from Information week titled, 5 Disruptive Technologies To Watch In 2007, the authors pick Web Services as one of those technologies. Broadly defined, the author site Software as a Service (SaaS) as well as Web 2.0 technologies as fitting this category and “a solid application platform.” Everything from enterprise email hosting to AJAX applications to expense and travel applications are now available as web services for the enterprise. How fast will organizations, particularly those in health care, move essential functions to web services rather than hosting multiple operating systems in house. It comes down to a question of what the business of healthcare is (patient care) and how essential it is to have internal services. Web Services can be internally hosted as well and part of a broader Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).
Quotes from the article: “The good news is that we finally we have a software architecture and business model that can meet our growing need for agility” and “Web makeovers, go slowly on deploying these technologies, start with some basic skills on CSS or RSS before moving any deeper, understand what expertise you have in-house versus what you need to purchase, and examine whether your existing portfolio of Web applications needs to be updated with more modern and dynamic content tools.”
